Antique
Communications Equipment

This exhibit traces the development of technologies used by offices for two purposes, communications within an office
or office building, and communications between an office building and the
outside world. It is reasonable to assume that, before our story begins in the
mid-1800s, office boys and messengers were used for both types of communication.
The technologies discussed here were revolutionary for their times, just as CMMS software is today. CMMS is used in a variety of facilities for equipment maintenance management.

Communications
Within a Company

In 1884, it was reported that at the Boston Herald,
"electric call-bells, speaking
tubes, and pneumatic tubes
furnish means of communication with all the departments." (The Bay
State Monthly, Oct. 1884, p. 32). This brief statement accurately
describes the state of interoffice communications technology at that time.

.

Speaking Tubes

"Two persons standing at each end of a simple tin pipe, 1 inch in
diameter, 50 to 100 feet or more long, with several elbows in it, and
carried through a half a dozen rooms, can still converse quite readily in
a low voice." (Manufacturer and Builder, Mar. 1872, p. 67)

Insofar as we have been able to determine, experiments with the use of
pipes and tubes to carry acoustic messages occurred during the early 19th
century, and speaking tubes were installed in some large residences by the
later 1830s. These early developments took place in Europe. "In
1824, M. Biot made a number of experiments in Paris by transmitting sound
through long tubes of 1,039 yards and heard whispers at that
distance." (Scientific American, Jan. 27, 1849) In 1839,
in a scene set in a large Englsih residence, Charles Dickens wrote that
"the voice of Madame Mantalini, conveyed through the speaking
tube, ordered Miss Nickleby up stairs." (The Life and Adventures
of Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 21.) A speaking tube also appears in
a story published by a different author three years later.
("The King's Bride," The Boston Miscellany of Literature and
Fashion, Apr. 1, 1842.) A description of a mansion being constructed
in London in 1849 reported that it was equipped with speaking tubes. (The
Albion, Nov. 17, 1849) And Scientific American (Jan. 27, 1849)
declared that "It is not a chimerical scheme by any means but one
which sooner or later will be adopted on a small scale in every factory,
foundry and public building." Beginning in 1851, we have found
a number of references to speaking tubes in hospitals.

Also in 1851, speaking tubes were exhibited at the London
Exposition. In a review of items exhibited, Granville Sharp wrote
that "Among the most useful means of saving unnecessary labor in
offices may be placed the speaking tubes by which messages may be sent
from room to room. Gutta percha is a most desirable substance for the
tubing, as it possesses a remarkable sound-transmitting quality; and
speaking-tubes are made by the Gutta Percha Company. The manner of calling
attention to the pipe is by blowing into the whistle at one end, when the
sound is immediately transmitted to the other, and conversation may be
commenced. Perhaps these tubes might form a most useful means of
communication between the board room and the several offices in the bank,
as well as from the counter to the ledger office, by which any inquiry
might be immediately answered."

During the second half of the nineteenth century, speaking tubes were
commonly installed in the walls of mansions, office buildings, ships, and
other structures to enable people in different rooms to speak with each
other. In some cases, only a mouth-piece was visible, while in other cases
a piece of flexible tube extended into the room. Early systems contained
whistles, so that a person could alert someone in another room that they
were wanted on the speaking tube. (Scientific American, May 29,
1852, p. 292) Later systems incorporated electric call bells that could be
used for the same purpose. In 1860, offices at the New York telegraph
building were connected by speaking tubes. (Scientific American,
June 8, 1860, p. 372) In 1876, the new Post Office building in New York
City had eight miles of speaking tubes. (Manufacturer and Builder,
Dec. 1876, p. 272) The catalog of the Fourteenth Exhibition of
the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanical Association, Boston, Mass,
1881, p. 195, reports that Seth W. Fuller of Boston exhibited speaking
tubes and annunciators.

American
Counting-Room, An Illustrated Monthly Magazine (June-Dec. 1883, p. 6),
carried an article on the new New York Produce Exchange building, shown in
the 1883 image to the left. The article stated that a
"comprehensive system of speaking-tubes is being put into the
building, by which it will be possible for any office in the building to
communicate with the main office. In the main office, or Exchange Room
[also known as the Main Hall or Exchange Hall], the mouths of the several
speaking-tubes are formed into banks, and the peculiar mechanism of the
system is such that one of five mouthpieces may be made to connect with
any one of twenty-five offices." The 1884 Prospectus of the Bryant &
Stratton Commercial School, Boston, MA, states "The Principal's
private study is connected with all the school-rooms by a system of
electric signals and speaking-tubes, by which he is enabled to direct all
the exercises of the school, if necessary, without leaving his room."

We have found three photographs of offices with speaking tubes, all of
which, are shown to the right. In the middle photograph, four speaking tubes are visible
at the front left. In the bottom photograph, a button that operated an electric call bell is visible below
the mouth-piece of each speaking tube on the pillar on the right side of
the photo.

Office of Roberts Hardware Co., Denver, CO, 1895. On the side of the
roll-top desk is a flexible speaking tube that connects to a tube in the
wall.Office with speaking tubes (along desk, front left),
1903. A cropped version of this photograph is posted in Wikipedia
without the permission of, or a credit to, the Early Office Museum, which
owns this photograph.
Counting Room, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, MA, 1896-1905.
Courtesy of Cambridge Historical Commission. See P. A. Rodgers et al., A
Photographic History of Cambridge, 1984, p. 77.

Call Bells and Annunciators

Around 1850, some large homes had mechanical call bell systems that
connected various room with the kitchen so that servants could be
summoned. We do not know whether such systems were used in offices.

In 1876, the new Post Office building in New York City had
battery-powered annuciators in 75 offices connected by two miles of
conducting wire. By tapping a knob on an annuciator, a person could summon
someone from one of the other offices. (Manufacturer and Builder,
Dec. 1876, p. 272)

Pneumatic Tubes

In 1881, pneumatic tubes carried cash and receipts between sales
counters and the central cashier at the John Wanamaker department store in
Philadelphia (Manufacturer and Builder, Jan. 1881, p. 20) and
documents among offices in the London Times building (Harper's
New Monthly Magazine, Nov. 1881, p. 843). In 1896, pneumatic
tubes were used at the New York Postal Telegraph to transport written
telegrams between the main telegraph office and the room where the
telegraph operators worked. (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Oct.
1896, p. 734)

During 1898-1906, Lamson Consolidated Store Service Co. advertised a foot power
pneumatic tube system for transmission of papers between offices within a
building. Lamson's 1898 brochure included photographs of one of its pneumatic
tube systems at the Boston Journal. A 1906 Lamson ad stated:
"Pressure of the foot gives quick service between floors or
departments, or between office and shipping room."

In 1906, a considerably larger Lamson pneumatic tube system was
operating in the Chicago post office building, "connecting all the
offices of the postal department as well as the other federal officials
who are located there, with the central receiving and sending station on
the main floor of the post office. This local system comprises 16 lines of
four-inch brass tubing, requiring more than two miles of tubing
altogether. Cartridges fly through these tubes at the rate of 30 miles an
hour. This system is used for intercommunication between offices and for
delivery to the post office." (The Business Man's Magazine,
1906)

Automatic messenger systems, such as Lamson Mechanical Messengers, were
used in offices to carry documents and other light articles. (Lawrence
R. Dicksee, Office Machinery and Appliances, London, 1916-18, p.
10)

Main
Operating Room of the Western Union, New York, Scribner's Magazine,
July 1889.
Image shows the pneumatic tube system for transmitting messages to and from
city stations, and
the mechanical messenger system for collecting from and
distributing to the 600 operators in the room.

According to a 1937 text, "Pneumatic tube conveyors are used quite
extensively in modern office buildings. Large elliptical pneumatic tubes
are used for the distribution of mail, while 1 1/4 inch 'baby tubes' may
be used to transport small papers. Belt conveyors are often used to carry
papers, while basket conveyors and dumb-waiters quickly carry more bulky
material up and down through the floors of the building." (John S.
MacDonald, Office Management, 1937, pp. 85-86)

Click
on this link to the Wisconsin
Historical Society, Wisconsin Historical Image, No. 13866, for a
photograph of the pneumatic tube system in the State Capitol Annex,
Madison, WI, 1942.

For additional information about and photographs of pneumatic tube systems
and mechanical messenger systems, see The
Cash Railway Website.

Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated a telephone at the 1876 Centennial
Exhibition in Philadelphia. The first telephones were point-to-point
systems, and Yates reports that "early installations of
point-to-point telephones often linked the office and factory of a single
firm....Beginning in the 1890s, private branch exchanges were widely
adopted to link many locations within large facilities." (JoAnne
Yates, Control through Communication, 1989, p. 21)

The Kellogg intercom phone pictured above was patented in 1894. The Simplex Interior Telephone Co. offered intercommunicating equipment
in 1896, and offered the model pictured to the right in 1900. The Electric Utilities Co. advertised the
Metaphone intercommunicating system in 1905. "How would
you like to simply put out your hand, unhook a small device, and be in
instant communication with [someone in your company]? The Metaphone
enables you to do this. It is a transmitter and receiver mounted on
opposite ends of a small metal handle. It requires only the current
necessary to ring an electric bell." The devices could be
connected in a network, so that any two could communicate without a
central switchboard, or radially, in which case only the central station
could communicate with the others.

Intercommunicating
telephone systems similar to the DeVeau and Stromberg-Carlson pictured
below and the Lennox pictured to the right were
advertised in 1905 and the following years by several additional companies, including
Electric Goods Mfg. Co. (1908-10) and Western Electric Co. (1908-14). One ad stated: "No operator is required. Simply pressing a
button calls the desired person and you talk." A 1912
advertisement for the Dictograph-Turner telephone system stated "no
switchboard, no operator, no waiting." With that system, a user
had a choice between listening with a handset or a loudspeaker in the
desktop console.

DeVeau Intercom, patented 1899-1905

Stromberg-Carlson Intercommunicating Telephone System, 1905.

The
image to the left shows drawings of a 1907 Dictograph Master System and
Sub-Station. The image to the right shows a man dictating while his voice
is transmitted from the Dictograph Master Station on his desk to a
Sub-Station on a stenographer's desk in another room. (General Acoustic
Co., The Dictograph and What It Does, 1907).

Three Dictograph systems, 1919, 1934-40, and 1940.

A 1937 text states: "The Dictograph is frequently
used, particularly in large organizations where a supplementary
inter-communicating system which provides direct connection between a
relatively small number of individuals, often officers and chief
executives, is desired. The receiver and mouthpiece are similar in
appearance to the hand telephone. Connection is made by the person calling
simply by depressing a small key, which is marked to indicate a particular
individual." (John S. MacDonald, Office Management,
1937, pp. 87-88, showing a unit similar to that in the lowest photograph to the
right)

The transmitting device in a Morse telegraph system was a key, which the
operator used to close and open an electric circuit following a code
consisting of dots and dashes. The receiving device included a
pencil that wrote the dots and dashes on paper tape, and then a sounder,
which converted electric impulses into noises that were transcribed by
telegraph workers. On long lines, a relay with a local battery was used to
move the lever of the sounder with greater force, making the sounds more
audible. In a Callard battery, zinc was located above copper in jars
filled with a solution of blue vitrol in water and connected in series.

Detail from "Men of Progress," painted by
Christian Schussele, 1862, showing Samuel Morse (right foreground) and
early Morse Recording Register. The photo on the right shows that
early Morse Recording Register.
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

Morse telegraph equipment used by students at the
Eastman Business College, 1862.
From the 1862 college catalog. Courtesy of Jim Drummond.

According to an account by Robert Sobel: "In 1832 Samuel F.
B. Morse developed the first practical [electric wireline] telegraph. He hoped to
interest businessmen in his scheme of linking large cities by telegraph,
but for ten years he attracted little attention. In 1844 he built the
first land telegraph, a line which ran between Baltimore and Washington.
Business finally awoke to the potential of such devices, and the Magnetic
Telegraph Company was formed in 1844 to operate a line from New York to
Philadelphia. [W]ithin two years Magnetic Telegraph showed a profit. By
the mid-1850s there were over fifty telegraph companies in operation; in
1856 Western Union was formed, and began absorbing smaller firms." (The
Big Board, 1965, pp. 52-53)

Yates (pp. 23-24) reports that in 1851 "The New York and Erie
Railroad was the first line to initiate regular telegraphic control of
train movement, called dispatching....Dispatching was a specialized
railroad function, but the telegraph could also be used for more generic
managerial functions. Once again, the Erie Railroad led the way,
this time under the general superintendency of Daniel McCallum. As his
1856 Superintendent's Report explained, hourly telegraphic reports were a
key element of the system he designed to control and evaluate
performance." Other railroads did not routinely use the telegraph for
dispatching or managerial control until the 1860s. Yates (pp. 118-19)
reports that "After 1863, the [Illinois Central] Railroad regularly
used telegraphic dispatching to handle schedule disruptions" and
"the telegraph was also used to speed routine reporting along the
road and, to a lesser extent, to New York."

In 1855, the Du Pont black powder manufacturing company installed a
private telegraph line connecting its Brandywine offices to the telegraph
office in Wilmington, DE. (Yates, p. 207) During the administration
of President Hayes (1877-1881), according to a recent report the
"White House ignored the newly invented typewriter, and although it
boasted a telephone, there were so few elsewhere that it was seldom
used. The center of communications in the White House was its busy
telegraph office." (Ari Hoogenboom, The Presidency of
Rutherford B. Hayes, 1988, p. 58) After railroads, the leading
meat-packing companies, Swift and Armour, were early users of the
telegraph. Beginning in the 1880s, these companies slaughtered cattle in
the midwest and shipped beef east to markets in refrigerated railroad cars.
(Yates, pp. 24-25)

In 1861 transcontinental telegraph wires connected the eastern US with
California, and in 1866 a transatlantic telegraph cable running between
Canada and Ireland permanently connected telegraph systems in North America with those
in Europe. An earlier transatlantic cable worked for a few weeks during
1858 but then went dead.

G. W. Mares, The History of the Typewriter, 1909,
Ch. 12, discusses the early history of typewriters that were designed to
transmit telegraphic messages. Printing telegraphs from 1859 to 1945 are shown in images to the right.

An 1892 publication reports that "the Essick telegraph system, which
S. V. Essick patented in 1883, is now being used successfully in all parts
of the world. Stock companies are being formed in many places with vast
capital for the purpose of operating this system of telegraphy." (Portrait
and Biographical Record, Stark County, 1892.) Mares (1909, pp.
301-02) reports that Essick systems were being used to send financial and
other news from a central bureau to machines located elsewhere in the same
city.
Ilion 1852-1952 reports that the Yetman Transmitting Typewriter was
manufactured at Ilion, NY, "for several years - 1890's -1906."
See illustration to the right. Mares (1909, p. 310) reports
that the Yetman was introduced in 1903 and that production ceased by 1909.
By moving levers, the Yetman's keyboard could be connected to the typing
mechanism, the telegraph transmitter, or both simultaneously. For further
information and photographs, visit The
Classic Typewriter Page.

To the right is an image
of the
Burlingame Telegraphing Typewriter (1908) with a standard typewriter
mounted on top. An operator typed a message on the standard typewriter,
producing a typed record of the message. At the same time, as each key was
depressed, the Burlingame device sent electrical impulses to a remote receiving
Burlingame device equipped with a typewriter, which typed the same
message. The electrical impulses could be sent over wires or without
wires. Company stock certificates are decorated with an illustration of
ship-to-shore communication. During 1908-09, the Burlingame Telegraphing
Typewriter Co. produced
demonstration machines and set up a factory. In an effort to raise equity
capital, employees, including George C. Clark, "demonstrated the Burlingame telegraph on road trips for about
a year in 1908 and 1909. No one seems to know for certain what happened to
the company, but I suspect it was lack of money to continue. The sales
crews did not sell anywhere near the amount of stock [certificates] that they had planned
to." (Information courtesy of Clark Family Research and George C.
Clark: Burlingame Telegraphing Typewriter Company, 1908-1909, A
description of life on the road demonstrating the Burlingame Telegraphing
Typewriter, Clark Family Research (333 Avenue B, Lakeport, CA 95453),
2003.) According to Adler
(1997, p. 89), the machine did not go into commercial production.

Telautoprint

Teletype

A 1937 text states: "Many companies which have a number of
branch offices located in different parts of the country use the
teletypewriter service provided by the American Telephone and Telegraph
Company through the associated companies of the Bell Telephone System. The
system provides for the installation of machines, similar to typewriters,
at each point, all being connected by wire with the headquarters. Sales
orders, memoranda, or anything that can be written on the ordinary
typewriter can be transmitted between the home office and the
branches." (John S. MacDonald, Office Management, 1937, p. 86)

American Keyboard Transmitter, American
Transmitter & Mfg. Co. This transmitter, which was
advertised in 1910, sent Morse code.

Pierson Telegraphic Transmitter, 1915 adCourtesy of the Museum of Business
History and Technology
Printing Telegraph that punched code on tape, Edward Kleinschmidt, c.
1915, National Museum of American History,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Sending a telegram on a multiplex machine, Canadian National
Telegraph. Canadian Science & Technology Museum, CN000701

Telegraph Office, possibly 1945

U.S. Military Office with Teletype Machines, probably 1940s.

Tickers

A ticker system uses telegraph technology to
distribute stock and commodity quotations as well as related financial
news to subscribers, including particularly brokerage houses. The
first ticker system was patented by E. A. Calahan in 1867. The Gold
and Stock Telegraph Co. began using Calahan tickers to report New York Stock Exchange transactions
to brokerage houses on Nov. 15, 1867. According to Robert Sobel, "The
tickers sent out prices from the floors of both the [New York Stock]
Exchange and the Open Board to brokerages for a fee of $6.00 a week.
The machine caught on immediately....Soon every major house had its crude
battery-operated machine." (The Big Board, 1965, pp. 86-87.)
During 1869-1873, Thomas A. Edison made a number of improvements to stock
ticker technology for the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. and for the Western
Union Telegraph Co. Edison's Universal stock printer became the
industry standard.

A ticker system consisted of transmitters and tickers.
As of 1883, quotations were sent using a transmitter,
"the keyboard
of which has much the same appearance as the keyboard of a piano, the
black keys representing letters and the white keys figures and
fractions." A transmitter of this type is pictured in the 1889 illustration
to the left ("Sending Messages over Ticker System," Scribner's
Magazine, July 1889) When an
operator struck a key on the transmitter, one of two small wheels (one for
letters, the other for numbers) in each connected ticker revolved until the desired
letter or figure came into position to print on a paper tape that passed through the device.
To the right is an 1883 illustration of a broker's office with two
tickers.

According to an 1883 report,
"At present the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company has about 1,000
instruments [tickers] in operation in the various brokers' and bankers'
offices, the leading hotels and other places of resort by speculators, all
of which furnish only the sales and quotations of the Stock [New York]
Exchange. The Commercial Company has several hundred tickers in
operation. It has been in business only a short time and the number
is rapidly increasing. The Gold and Stock Company also operates
about 300 instruments, which give quotations of cotton and petroleum and
of mining stocks, and about 300 more which furnish financial news,
miscellaneous quotations and other matters of interest on Wall
Street." (G. L. Howe & O. M. Powers, The Secrets of
Success in Business, 1883)

The world's first commercial telephone system, the Connecticut District
Telephone Co., opened in Jan. 1878. Its Nov. 1878 directory lists
391 subscribers, who paid $22 a year each. Users needed to transfer
the telephone between their mouths and ears, and "were limited to
three minutes a call and no more than two calls an hour without permission
from the central office." The system was a single party line,
that is, only one call could be made at a time, and any subscriber who
picked up a phone could listen in. (New York Times, June 10,
2008, p. D3, discussing a forthcoming Christie's auction at which a copy
of the telephone directory was to be sold.)

A telephone was installed on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor on Nov. 13, 1878.

Telephones that had handsets one end of which was placed against an ear, the other end of which was placed close to the mouth, and that rested horizontally in a cradle when not in use, were introduced in the U.S. in 1928.

Telautograph -- A system to transmit
handwriting by wire -- also used within companies

Telegraphs using Morse code or typewriters could not transmit
handwriting, including signatures, or drawings. Telautographs were
designed to fill that gap. After attempts
by a number of inventors, in 1887-88 Elisha Gray invented what became
the first commercially successful telautograph. The Gray National
Telautograph Co. was founded in 1888, and its products based on Gray's
patent were introduced to the market in 1893. The first commercial
units were installed at the American Bank Note Co. The telautograph was
refined during 1893 and 1900, and the improvement designed in 1900 was
marketed for several decades.

According to a 1893 description of the Gray Telautograph, "In
transmitting a message, drawing, sketch, or whatever may be desired, the
sender takes an ordinary lead pencil and writes or draws his message with
it on a sheet of paper, and simultaneously another pencil at the receiving
end of the line reproduces every movement of the sender's pencil on a
similar sheet of paper. The receiving pencil is actuated entirely by
automatic electric mechanism, and is not touched by the human hand. The
result is a fac-simile in every detail of the letters of the message or
lines of the drawing sent from the transmitting station." (Manufacturer
and Builder, April 1893, p. 76. This article includes
illustrations of the first three models of the telautograph.)
Messages were transmitted over two-wire circuits such as telegraph wires.
Apparently early telautographs did not work well for transmission over
long distances and as a result were used primarily within metropolitan
areas.An 1893 catalog for the Gray National Telautograph Co. described the transmitter
as follows: "An ordinary lead pencil is used, near the point of
which two silk cords are fastened at right angles to each other. These
cords connect with the instrument, and, following the motions of the
pencil, regulate the current impulses which control the receiving pen at
the distant station. The writing is done on ordinary paper five inches
wide." The receiver was described as follows: "The receiving pen is a capillary glass tube placed at
the junction of two aluminium arms. This glass pen is supplied with ink
which flows from a reservoir through a small rubber tube placed in one of
the arms. The electrical impulses coming over the wire move the pen
of the receiver simultaneously with the movement of the pencil in the hand
of the sender. As the pen passes over the paper, an ink tracing is left,
which is always a fac-simile of the sender's motions."

The Gray National Telautograph Co. was still operating in 1905. A 1905 article states that "the telautograph did not come into
extensive general use until quite recently. Business people did not
begin to take real hold of it till the middle of 1903." The article
continues: "the leading banks and trust companies of New York, Boston
and Philadelphia have adopted it. In some large banks it is used as
an intercommunicating system connecting the various departments. The
advantage of the telautograph system in banks lies largely in the value of
the records kept of communications. The big insurance companies have
also adopted the telautograph. Up to the present these have found it
most useful for communications between their policy loan department
and the index room where the records of policies are kept on file.
Several Wall Street firms have installed the machine in the place and
stead of messenger boys for service between their offices and those of the
telegraph and cable companies. (H. V. Ross, "Commercial Use of the
Telautograph," The Business Man's Magazine and The Book-Keeper,
May 1905. This article includes an illustration of a 1905 model
telautograph.)

According to another report in 1905, an "interesting instrument that one
finds in an up-to-date electrically equipped office is the telautograph,
which automatically reproduces handwriting in facsimile at a point more or
less distant. Where it is necessary to give exact information to a number
of persons simultaneously and have the same a matter of record, this
instrument is very convenient. For example, a train-dispatcher can
announce the movements of trains to a number of officials stationed at
different points by simply writing a single message. The device is also
employed by newspapers and other concerns for writing bulletins. When used
in a bank the cashier or teller may inquire from the bookkeeper as to the
amount of balance or other particulars of a customer's account, the
message and the answer being noiselessly received." (Harper's
Weekly, July 1, 1905. This article includes a photograph of
a 1905 model Telautograph.)

A 1937 text states: "The Telautograph is used rather extensively
for transmitting written messages between offices. Messages are
written in longhand with a special pen. The writing is then reproduced in
exactly the same way, usually on a roll of paper, at the receiving
station." (John S. MacDonald, Office Management, 1937, p. 86)
In the 1940s, Telautograph marketed an improved model under the
Telescriber name.

According to an 1889 report, Malone Wheless invented a telegraphone
that recorded telephone messages, but we have found no evidence that this
device was manufactured commercially. (The Phonographic World, Oct.
1889, p. 44)

In 1898, Valdemar Poulsen, a Dane, obtained the first
patent for electromagnetic sound recording. In 1900, he demonstrated
a telegraphone based on his patent. The U.S. rights were purchased
by the American Telegraphone Co. in 1903. This company was still in business in
1923.

The telegraphone could record sound from live dictation
or from a telephone line and could play back the recording through a
speaker or over a telephone line. As a result, it could be used (a)
to record dictation to be played back to a stenographer on the same
machine or to be sent to a stenographer over a telephone line; (b) to
record a two-way telephone conversation; (c) to record telephone messages
when no one was available to answer the phone; and (d) to send a
pre-recorded message over the telephone to multiple receipt points.

There were two types of telegraphone as of 1905. One
type recorded magnetically on a steel wire and the other magnetically on a
steel disc. The wire telegraphone "contains about two miles of
fine (.01 inch in diameter) steel wire, which is sufficient for about
a half-hour's conversation, but at any time a message or all messages may
be effectively effaced at will, when the apparatus is ready for new
records." It has recently been reported that "the most
successful of the early office dictation Telegraphones was the Model C
[produced in 1911], with horizontally-mounted spools for better wire
control" (in contrast to the earlier 1905 model top right, which had
vertically-mounted spools). (Pavek
Museum of Broadcasting)

In the case of a disk telegraphone, "the record
is made on a thin metal disc. The record is quite permanent, and
can be removed only by a strong magnet, which, however, will efface it
altogether." The disc telegraphone pictured to the right had a
recording capacity of 2 minutes per disc. For a 1905 photograph of a
different disc telegraphone model that used a smaller disc, see Harper's
Weekly, July 1, 1905.

According
to an article published in 1906, "the telegraphone is not in use as
yet among the business public." (E.F. Stearns, "A
Spool of Wire Speaks," Technical World Magazine, Dec.
1906, pp. 409-12.)

During the 19th century, at least three systems were invented for
transmitting copies of messages, drawings, and photographs. These
systems used a transmitter with a stylus that passed over the message or
image numerous times, and activated a remote receiver with another stylus
that drew a facsimile. The first of these systems was introduced by
Alexander Bain, a Scot, in 1842. This system was not a commercial
success. Another system was introduced by Frederick Bakewell in
1848. And another system was introduced by N. S. Amstutz c.
1892. The top two images to the right show Amstutz's Electro-Artograph.
According to the description, when a stylus in the transmitter went over a
specially prepared photographic image, a
stylus in the receiver created a line engraving that was ready for press
printing. For further information on the Anstutz system and an example of
an image
created by the receiver, see "The
Photo-Electro-Artograph," American Journal of Photography,
Jan. 1892, pp. 34-35, and N.S.
Amstutz, "Acrograph Engraving Machine," The Photographic
Times, 1899, pp. 446-47.

Arthur Korn introduced the first practical photoelectric technology for
scanning and transmitting photographs in 1902. During the mid-1920s,
Western Union and other companies introduced photograph transmission
services, mainly for use by newspapers, and in 1930 Western Union
introduced facsimile message service. The bottom photo to the right shows Warren Jones in New York watching the
signature of his client Ralph Beaver Strassburger, a wealthy businessman,
being transmitted by wire from London. The photo is undated, but the
internet has many references to Mr. Strassburger dating from the 1930s.

In 1966, Xerox introduced the desktop Xerox Magnafax Telecopier.
Office use of facsimile machines expanded during the 1970s and,
particularly, the 1980s. The number of fax machines in the US
increased from 300,000 in 1982 to 1,500,000 in 1988 (Xerox Crop., Facsimile:
A Quarter-Century of Innovation, 1989).. During that period,
office workers typed documents, or printed documents created on word
processors and computers, and then scanned and transmitted the documents
using fax machines. By the end of the 1990s, use of fax machines declined
because documents were increasingly transmitted directly between computers
over the internet.

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